22 May 2014 – 6:47PM

Was thinking about – for example – Ferf just texted me. I don’t know why, I don’t know if it’s because I’m detached…  I don’t know what the problem is. I don’t, I don’t have… I can’t switch to the gear to respond or think of what I would say to respond. It was simple, whatever it was.  It made me think of how it is for me. Say my Mom calls – or if anybody calls – if I don’t see that I missed it – or if I don’t see it when they call and I miss it. Once my phone notifies me that they called – I don’t – sometimes I don’t answer. A lot of times I don’t answer cuz I just don’t have words for whatever it is the person wants. I can’t switch gears to whatever that is. And um. And I’m just so spaced and out of it. So detached from the phone I’m holding almost. Like, I mean… yea. Kinda like it’s the ‘movie’ part. I don’t know what part causes it, but…

Anyway, by the time – a lot of times by the time I am a little bit better or more connected mentally to the world and it’s speed a little bit better, by that point usually so many other things have gotten my immediate attention – which is all I really have , is my immediate attention. Um,  I can’t have things floating in the back of my mind to do – it just doesn’t ever come out. But, by the time Im able to do stuff a little bit better, other things have gotten my immediate attention. Be that making Breakfast. Or Aedan asked me a question – and those are rough sometimes for me to answer – or, uh, I mean anything really. I have to go get up to go to the bathroom or … any of that stuff is enough to grab my immediate attention. However simple it is, gets my immediate attention. And that’s it. I don’t ever get back to whatever it was. Like say for example somebody texted me earlier today or yesterday. I don’t remember about it because I’m already onto something else and that little immediate attention span that I have is filled with whatever it is… the tasks of my day, getting through the day – the pain – whatever. The pain gets my immediate attention a lot. But… hope this made sense.

Second recording:

8:30PM

22 May 2014 – 8:30PM

My brain… you know. I was just thinking – because I was going to try to make something to eat.  And so I – like I always do, I do it in stages. I take the things out of the refrigerator and let them sit in an obvious place that I need. So I can see them. Which… uh if I pass it to go to the washroom or something it’ll remind me. Um, and it just occurred to me ,again, and I’ve done this from time to time – set a reminder on my phone. Which on my phone is a simple thing. The clock. I just push on a button and I’m essentially there.  And so it sometimes bothers me when people don’t understand. They make a very – genuinely nice suggestion: “Make yourself a reminder” or this or that. My phone would of course would be a good place – they usually suggest writing down a list which doesn’t help me – which I’m getting to. I’m frustrated that it doesn’t help me. I’m not frustrated that people suggest it – that’s not why I’m frustrated at that moment. But the thing is like with my phone. I was thinking to myself I’m like “I know this” and I was frustrated with myself for a minute – well, not with myself but just frustrated. I guess.

…

Looking at my phone right now to see if I can go through and remind myself what the Hell I was just thinking… click on the clock… create alarm… okay. So um, but, the trick is that then I have to remember to do these things. Right here I see in big numbers, pretty easy to change. I want to rest for… (phone making sounds as I set alarm) I have to do these things in chunks. I can’t do it all at once, it’s a pretty big task… so it’s 8:53 now, about 20 mins… 9:13 – Name alarm… See today I can get through this it’s still a little, uh, tough. And I like this thinking out loud thing, it’s helpful when I can do this… hang on… (setting alarm) “Make…” (clicking sounds heard from phone…). Okay. “This alarm is set for 19mins from now”. See that’s very helpful to me (that phone tells me when alarm is set to go off). A lot of times I screw it up.

That’s why I have to create a new alarm each time. The two steps I just did weren’t too bad… let’s go to ‘Alarm Repeat’… This is where it always messes up. It’s different days of the week. So if I want to remember this on a Wednesday or something randomly to make something. I can’t just have the same alarm because it’d be Wednesday instead of today, being Thursday, when this… I’m confusing myself.

Um, anyway. That’s what happens. And so… what made me think of that? Oh. Um, when it says how long the alarm is set from now. That helps me know. Otherwise it’ll say 2 days and 3 hours from now. Then it helps me know it’s going to actually happen. Cus it’s happened to me a bunch, that I set a reminder to do something and I don’t remember and the food just rots – well, it doesn’t rot. But it certainly sits out till I go to bed. Which isn’t good. Or sometimes it just doesn’t happen at all. I forget to do whatever the task was.

Anyway, I guess my point was that I have to remember to remember to make these alarms. Or, I have to remember to remember to look at a list. And even if I do, that doesn’t always mean I can get through it. I’m grateful today that I can get through doing this. I can’t always count on my abilities to do that. And then a lot of times, I can’t, like with a list, I can’t necessarily process a list. Or, uh, I can’t – like changing the direction of my thought, from one task to another or from one place or thing to a… like getting up and going a different room to do a task. Means I have to switch my focus from, uh… how am I going to explain this? it’s not…  Doesn’t make sense…

Over the years it got frustrating too. Thinking about something and as I start to talk about it, I fall off that mental tight-rope and uh, it doesn’t make any sense and it’s not describing at all what I mean to say. And I get frustrated.  So, um… yea. It’s a bummer. It was a good thought. I guess that’s why I started to record I suppose huh? I hope some of this made sense.